Thursday, April 16, 2009

What goes around...

So Mr. Oldham, a Hampshire College professor (naturally) led the charge last year criticizing the School Committee for “outsourcing” food service to save ten$ of thousand$ and garnered all sorts of ink and bandwidth defending the “lunch ladies” who were getting outsourced.

Last night at the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee informational forum on Social Service Funding--the one Town Manager Larry Shaffer was banned from--he advocates, in a bumbling sort of way, for town tax money to continue funding these enterprises (making Amherst the only community in the state to do so).

At the May 30, 2006 Town Meeting where I had a multi-media presentation on DVD disc prepared (with background music no less) timed at just under 4 minutes (I had five since I was "amending the motion") to be projected on the large screen in front of Town Meeting, Mr. Oldham did a “point of order” as I was walking to the podium and demanded the Moderator (not exactly a BIG fan of mine) censor/ ban the presentation because I use clips of town officials (speaking at public meetings) without their permission.

Violating my First Amendment rights all in order to protect the taxpayer subsidized game of golf. Hmmm…

The moderator dismissed him, but about one minute into the presentation, when Czar Awad complained about my choice of The Eagles “Lying eyes” as background for her previous Town Meeting misstatement (lie), he shut down the presentation.

Interestingly, Ms. Awad went on to publish a letter in the Amherst Bulletin two years later categorically declaring that she had changed her “homestead declaration” back from an expensive South Hadley home to an Amherst Condo when in fact had not. She is currently living in South Hadley and unlike the bar Cheers, nobody seems to remember her name.

Today Mr. Oldham has a column (unpaid of course—and sometimes indeed you get what you pay for) in the Bully where at least he does state the new School Superintendent should not get more than the previous Super, but he concludes with a bleeding heart reference to the lunch ladies: “whatever the state of the budget, the treatment and conditions of the workers remains our concerns.”

Well gee there Professor, what about the thousands of small businesses (you know, the ones who pay taxes to fund all your favorite social programs) that perished over the past year, or the millions of workers laid off?

This is an economic 9/11—a new normal. Get used to it! (And yes folks, he voted two years ago not to allow the commemorative flags to fly on 9/11 as did most members of the TMCC).

I have a great idea: let's use ALL the money that the golf course takes in OVER its projected target and use that to fund human services. If the golf course more than pays for itself, the human services budget benefits mightily. But that budget gets nothing until the golf course turns a profit. I bet Mr. Oldham will be the first one standing in line for a membership!

Yeah, one of the many, many times I appeared before the Select Board (and had to wait almost 4 hours for the Cherry Hill issue to come up) and they had spent sooooooooo much time talking about the Human Services budget I pointed out that the amount squandered on golf could go towards these agencies.

Even Mr. Weiss (when he was briefly a Czar) seemed to get the connection

"The moderator dismissed him, but about one minute into the presentation, when Czar Awad complained about my choice of The Eagles “Lying eyes” as background for her previous Town Meeting misstatement (lie), he shut down the presentation."

That's not childish ... that's genius!

No one in South Hadley could come close to creating A-1 material like that. That's why she moved there.

Totally Awesome Video you put together, shows the REAL truth behind the LIES. Keep going Larry, maybe some day we'll have a mayor that WE elect and get rid of these corrupt boards that (supposedly) represent the people.